


quill and ink

by iagosmash



Category: Hamlet - Shakespeare
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-12
Updated: 2014-05-12
Packaged: 2018-01-24 11:42:04
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,655
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1603883
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iagosmash/pseuds/iagosmash
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hamlet takes a break from studying to convince Horatio that having marked skin is the opposite of a bad thing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	quill and ink

The main disadvantage to having Hamlet as a study partner is that he’s just too damn good. Horatio still has an entire page to go in his translation, but Hamlet’s been finished for ten minutes and is starting to get bored.

“My lord, that isn’t going to make me work any faster,” Horatio says as Hamlet lays his chin on his shoulder, his breath tickling Horatio’s neck.

“Hamlet,” the prince corrects insistently.

“Someone might hear,” Horatio protests.

“Horatio, it’s a Friday evening. Can you think of one student who is going to come to the _library_ instead of going to the taverns?” Hamlet begins to pull Horatio’s collar away from his neck, revealing a glimpse of the constellation of freckles that dusts Horatio’s shoulders and back. “There’s no-one here. There’s not going to be anyone here. We are completely…alone.” His lips brush Horatio’s shoulder.

Horatio shoots him a warning look.

“Go and read a book while I finish this translation,” he says sternly.

“I am absolutely not in the mood to read.”

Horatio sighs. Hamlet is _always_ in the mood to read, and when he isn’t…well.

“I know exactly what mood you’re in, and it’s not happening,” Horatio says. “Now, _my lord_ , if you wouldn’t mind…”

He shrugs Hamlet off him and returns to his work, but it is mere minutes before he is interrupted again. He feels a pull on his collar, then an odd prickling sensation.

“My lord, what are you – Hamlet! Stop it!”

Hamlet is drawing inky lines between the freckles on Horatio’s skin with his quill, joining the little spots together.

“Look at that, your freckles spell ‘no fun’ in the old runes,” Hamlet grins.

“Don’t be ridiculous, I’m covered in the blasted things. You could join any of them up to spell anything.”

“I could, couldn’t I?” says Hamlet, dipping his quill into his inkpot.

“Oh, please, my lord, don’t. My skin’s unsightly enough as it is, I don’t need you making it worse.”

Hamlet looks into Horatio’s eyes, surprise and concern etched over his delicate features.

“You think they’re unsightly?” he says incredulously.

“Awfully.”

“Horatio! Why would you think that?”

“My gran always said I had a barbarian’s complexion,” Horatio says, averting his wet brown eyes from Hamlet’s steely blue ones. “Not like you,” he adds quietly, a blush sweeping under the freckles that are dotted along his cheekbones and over the bridge of his nose.

“Well, maybe I like barbarians,” Hamlet says.

Horatio looks at him.

“You…you don’t mind them?”

Hamlet doesn’t answer. Instead, he returns the tip of his quill to Horatio’s skin, tracing more inky lines between the freckles on his shoulder. Horatio twists his neck, trying decipher the wobbly runes Hamlet is drawing.

“Boar…bear? What on earth is that one meant to be?”

Hamlet chuckles softly, then leans in and brushes a light kiss over Horatio’s lips.

“Beautiful.”

He runs a long pale finger down the side of Horatio’s neck, which he knows from experience is particularly sensitive. He’s rewarded with a tiny hum from the back of Horatio’s throat.

“That’s cheating, my lord,” Horatio says, accepting that he isn’t going to finish his translation.

Hamlet suddenly grins wickedly, his eyes lighting up with something Horatio recognises and has learnt to fear. He dips his quill in the inkwell again before attacking Horatio’s sensitive neck with it. Horatio almost squeals at the sensation, which hovers somewhere between tickling irritation and a scratching pleasure.

“What have you done, my lord?” he says when Hamlet pulls his hand away. His tone is half stern, half intrigued.

“ _Hamlet_ ,” the prince says emphatically. His own name is scrawled across Horatio’s neck, his aristocratically incomprehensible hand made even worse by the unique medium.

“Unbelievable,” Horatio sighs. He raises his hand and swipes a finger though the ink on his neck. It comes away wetly shining. He briefly considers wiping it on a spare piece of parchment, or maybe Hamlet’s tunic, but the sight of his prince’s insolent grin makes him drag his finger along Hamlet’s angular cheekbone, leaving a black smudgy line just under the thin silver duelling scar below Hamlet's left eye. Hamlet merely laughs.

“Oh, do you want to start something?” he chuckles.

Horatio has always been enamoured of Hamlet’s appearance, his pale aristocratic complexion. The contrast between the black hair and milky skin, the dashing scar from a duel in his first year at the university, those arresting blue-grey eyes gleaming under dark lashes, have always entranced Horatio, but now, with that inky line marking the pale skin, Hamlet’s appearance stirs something low in Horatio’ belly. He uses his clean hand to pull Hamlet to him, crushing their lips together in a kiss.

When they pull apart the grin is still fixed firmly on Hamlet’s face.

“I’ll take that as a yes.”

They shove their books and parchment into their satchels hurriedly and Horatio barely notices that Hamlet keeps his quill and inkwell in his hand. When they reach Hamlet’s room – one of the largest, most luxuriant and private the university has to offer – Hamlet barely lets Horatio get in the door before throwing their satchels into the corner and pushing him to the large bed, clumsily removing his tunic as they go.

Once on the bed they remove each other’s upper clothing, Horatio fumbling with the jewelled fastenings of Hamlet’s jacket. After a brief, intense kiss, Hamlet pushes Horatio gently onto his front, lying on the silk sheets with his olive-skinned back on display. Hamlet straddles his thighs, but they are both still fully clothed from the waist down and Horatio wonders briefly what Hamlet is planning before he feels the pricking tickle of the quill on his skin.

“Unbelievable,” he breathes, and he hears Hamlet laugh above him.

Hamlet scrawls words across Horatio’s freckled shoulders, a random mixture of worshipful compliments, obscene innuendo and brief classical extracts. He makes the effort to write fair, the elegant, more readable script feeling more reverent than his usual dismissive aristocratic scrawl as well as making him feel more like Horatio’s equal. He letters a sentence from Cicero’s version of the tale of Damon and Pythias down Horatio’s back, then connects up some more freckles, the inky lines forming shaky runes as a well as random patterns. Every now and then Hamlet stops writing for just long enough to plant a reverent kiss on Horatio’s warm flesh. The kisses, combined with the curious intimacy of the writing and the feel of slick ink on his skin, keep the arousal humming dully under Horatio’s skin, throbbing whenever Hamlet rolls his hips against Horatio’s ass in order to reach a new patch of skin.

Soon Horatio’s whole back is covered in ink, words and patterns and lines and runes layered over freckles. Hamlet sits back and admires his handiwork, admires the way the black ink shines wetly on Horatio’s olive skin. He leans over Horatio, careful not to touch his skin to the wet ink on Horatio’s back.

“Gorgeous,” he breathes into Horatio’s ear. Horatio, whose eyes are shut, merely sighs softly in response.

Hamlet sits back and, seized with a sudden unwarranted urge, runs his hands down Horatio’s back, the ink smearing into a black mess. The wet feel of the ink as his hands slide over Horatio’s muscles is inexplicably, unquestionably, unspeakably erotic, and his cock twitches. For the first time since the library, his arousal is stoked from a slow burn into a raging need, and he flips Horatio onto his back beneath him. Horatio, whose pleasure is still of the romantic, relaxed kind, is surprised when Hamlet crushes their lips together in a passionate kiss, swiping his tongue along Horatio’s lip to open his mouth. They stay like that for a while, Hamlet rolling his hips against Horatio’s thigh until he is fully hard, cock straining against the fastenings of his breeches.

When Hamlet pulls away he is panting for breath. There are smudgy handprints over Horatio’s collarbones from where he held him during their kiss and without thinking Hamlet grabs the inkpot, forgoing the quill and dipping his slender index finger in instead. He gives Horatio a second to protest, wet blackened finger hovering over his freckled chest. The look in Horatio’s eyes is all the encouragement he needs, and he writes his own name on Horatio’s skin for the second time, getting a hot thrill from the feeling of possession.

He finishes the ‘T’ with a swipe over Horatio’s nipple, and Horatio arches up slightly beneath him, gasping at the sensation of wet ink on his sensitive flesh. Hamlet feels Horatio twitching under the rough cotton of his hose and he rolls his hips forward, rocking their cocks together through the fabric.

Horatio looks up at Hamlet, watching his eyes flutter shut for a split second as a low moan escapes from his throat. Apart from the mess on his hands and the swipe across his cheek, Hamlet’s skin is still maddeningly, unfairly clean. Horatio wants desperately to feel what Hamlet has felt, the slick slide of his hands over inky skin, and to possessively mark the expanse of Hamlet’s milky white flesh. He wriggles out from under Hamlet, forcing the prince gently onto his back and straddling him, reversing their positions.

Horatio briefly considers retrieving the quill so that Hamlet can feel its oddly pleasurable scratch, but the insistent twitching of his cock and Hamlet’s heavy breathing indicates that they’re both well past that. Somewhere in the back of his mind, rational, sensible Horatio is alarmed at the mess, the ruining of the sheets, the wasting of ink; but hot panting Horatio, with a throbbing cock and his prince pinned submissively under him, does not care. He has the inkwell in his hand.

“Do it,” Hamlet pants, seemingly knowing exactly what Horatio is thinking. There are two spots of colour high on his pale cheeks, partially hidden on one side by the now-dry stripe of ink. His blue-grey eyes are sparkling with lust; there’s a lascivious grin on his face.

Horatio tips the inkpot, pouring a small pool of ink onto Hamlet’s stomach. Hamlet lets out a breathy moan at the feel of it, and Horatio uses both hands to spread it across his torso. He leans down, sucking wetly at one of Hamlet’s nipples before swiping a hand over it, saliva mixing wetly with ink. Hamlet moans his name and Horatio takes a moment to rub little circles over Hamlet’s nipples as the prince starts writhing beneath him, trying to create friction against the weight of Horatio sitting heavy on his groin.

“Damn you, Horatio, if you don’t – ah – do something about these blasted breeches I’ll – ah – I’ll –”

Horatio lightly pinches a nipple and Hamlet’s whining dies into a gasping moan. Horatio moves his hands down below Hamlet’s navel, spreading the ink across the skin just above his waistband, staining the fine trail of hairs an even darker black. Before he gets to work on Hamlet’s breeches, Horatio leans over him, kissing him sloppily and rubbing their ink-covered bodies together. The feel of skin sliding on skin is almost too much for Hamlet to handle, and he breaks the kiss to force Horatio to sit up, untangling the laces on his breeches.

The slickness of the ink on their hands makes undoing the fastenings difficult and fumbling for both of them, but eventually they both free each other’s cocks from the confines of their breeches. Hamlet grasps Horatio’s greedily, stroking up its length and leaving a trail of black ink smeared along the shaft. He swipes his thumb over the head, wiping away a bead of pre-cum as Horatio moans and gasps above him. Unable to bear the heavy aching need any longer he takes his own cock in his other hand, the slick of the ink feeling as good as any oil.

Horatio leans over Hamlet, supporting himself with one arm planted near the prince’s head, and reaches down to wrap his other hand over the one Hamlet is stroking himself with. Horatio manoeuvres their cocks together, batting Hamlet’s hands out of the way so that he can wrap his fist around both of them. Hamlet throws his head back, arching off the bed at the sensation of Horatio’s cock rubbing hotly against his own, lubricated by the ink. He grasps helplessly at Horatio’s shoulders, eyes clenched shut and a garbled mix of prayers, curses and Horatio’s name streaming from his mouth as they both thrust into Horatio’s fist. Horatio, utterly silent until now save small needy noises at the back of his throat, hisses out from between clenched teeth –

“ _Hamlet…_ ”

Hamlet comes with a violent jerk, breathlessly yelling out some fractured syllables of Horatio’s name. Horatio thrusts harder, faster, working Hamlet through his climax while building to his own. As the white splashes of cum run over Hamlet’s stomach, the sight of the pearly drops against the black ink pushes Horatio over the edge and his cum mixes with Hamlet’s on the prince’s stomach.

Horatio collapses onto Hamlet, ink and sweat and cum sticky between them. Hamlet plants tiny flickering kisses to the side of Horatio’s face, and Horatio thinks that his prince’s sleepy afterglow kisses are his favourite thing about sleeping with the heir to the Danish throne – or one of them, at least.

Eventually the mess trapped between their bodies begins to feel itchy and uncomfortable, and Horatio lifts himself off Hamlet, who is still fluttering on the verge of sleep.

“Call for a bath, my lord,” Horatio says, eyeing the mess they’ve created together. Hamlet merely makes a sleepy noise and raises a hand to Horatio’s shoulder in what Horatio assumes in an unbelievably lazy attempt to pull him back down over the prince’s body. “You can’t go to sleep in this state, my lord,” Horatio adds with the faintest of laughs.

Hamlet sighs as he raises his head and opens one grey eye, surveying the damage.

“Oh, very well,” he says. Horatio scrambles off him and Hamlet swings shaky legs over the edge of his bed. “Take your clothes into the antechamber.”

Horatio does so as Hamlet tucks himself back into his breeches and cracks open the heavy wooden door that leads to the quarters of his valet and manservant, the two staff he brought with him from Elsinore.

“A bath, if you please!” he calls. “I’ll be in my closet while you prepare it.”

He leaves the door ajar and hides the mess he’s in inside the small antechamber with Horatio while the two servants bring in the large metal tub, filling it with jug after jug of hot water from the stove in their quarters. Almost all of the ink on their bodies has dried now, and Horatio begins to worry that it may not come off, that their skin is going to be stained black until it fades away of its own accord. When Hamlet leans into him and whispers that he hopes Horatio appreciates his freckles now, Horatio suddenly feels like being stained black for the next fortnight was entirely worth it.

“My lord, do you wish for clean sheets?” comes a voice from inside the room, and Horatio winces in horror, praying that their cum had all been caught by Hamlet’s stomach and that it merely looks like Hamlet has had a catastrophic accident whilst trying to write in bed.

“Oh – yes – it’s ink, if you can’t remove it easily just dispose of them,” Hamlet replies, utterly nonchalant about the ruination of silk sheets that probably cost more than the average Danish farmer earned in a year.

Finally the bath is drawn, the bed is stripped and the servants have left. Hamlet draws Horatio back into the room towards the enormous bath. Steam is curling invitingly off the surface of the water.

“Bath time,” Hamlet says, reaching once more for the laces of Horatio’s breeches with a grin.


End file.
